The Soldier Spies (Men at War 3)

“Well, it worked,” Donovan said. “And just between you and me, there was more to it than appears.”

“I had sort of figured that out,” Ellis said. “I haven’t figured out what yet.”

It was a subtle request to be told. Donovan, as subtly, turned him down. “Have you had breakfast?”

Ellis hesitated.

“There’s a coffee shop at Anacostia,” he said.

“Which means you haven’t,” Donovan said. “Which means that you’ve been up all night, too. Am I right?”

“I figured I’d better stick around.”

“The cook’s not up,” Donovan said. “But I started the coffee. Do you think you could make us some ham and eggs without burning the kitchen down?”

“Yes, sir,” Ellis said.

“I’ll go put a shirt on,” Donovan said,“and grab my bags. I won’t be long.”

He started up the stairs, then turned.

“Ellis, maybe you’d better check with Anacostia. I’d hate to go all the way out there only to find we can’t fly out today.”

“I checked just before I came over here,” Ellis said.

“Yes, of course you would have,” Donovan said. “What would I do without you, Ellis?”

“I don’t know,” Ellis said seriously. “Without one man who knows what he’s doing, this outfit would be even more fucked up than it already is.”

It took Donovan a moment to realize that Ellis, in his own way, was making a joke.

Then he laughed, a hearty, deep laugh in his belly.

“Sunny-side up, Ellis, please,” he said. “And try not to burn the toast.” And then he continued up the stairs.

Ellis turned to a telephone on a small table against the wall and dialed a number.

“Ellis,” he said when the call was answered. “I’m at the Boss’s. We should leave here in thirty minutes. If you don’t hear from me again in two hours, tell the Captain that we’re on our way.”

Then he hung up, went into the kitchen, removed his uniform blouse, and, wearing an apron, he made breakfast for the two of them.

Ellis had learned to cook from a Chinese boy aboard the USS Panay of the Yangtze River Patrol. He often thought of that when he was pressed into cook service. That had been a long time ago. He’d seen a twenty-one-year-old seaman first striking for bosun third. Seventeen years ago.

But he’d only been back from China a short time. Just before the war started, they’d closed down the Yangtze Patrol and sailed what gunboats were left to the Philippines. They’d wanted to keep him in the Philippines, but his enlistment was up, and he didn’t think he wanted to serve in the Philippines, so he told them he wanted out, and they’d sent him home.

They’d been pissed, of course. Everybody knew the war was coming, and they didn’t want to let him out. But there was nothing they could do about it (enlistments had not yet been frozen). So they’d sent him back as unpleasantly as they could, making him work his way as supercargo on an old and tired coastal freighter headed for overhaul at San Diego. He’d thought then that since he would never see China again (he loved China), the best thing he could hope for was to keep his nose clean so he could get his twenty years in and retire with

his rating.

That was not quite two years ago.

He had fallen into the shit and come up smelling like roses. The orders that were soon sending him back to China (and to Burma, and India, and Egypt, and England) described him as “the administrative assistant to the Director of the Office of Strategic Services.” Which meant that he was going to travel with the Colonel to all those places and take care of whatever he needed taken care of.

That sure beat what for most of his adult life had been his great ambition, to be the ranking chief on a Yangtze River gunboat.

Naturally, there had to be a price to pay for this beyond making life a little easier for the Colonel when he could arrange it—beyond even putting himself between the Colonel and whoever meant the Colonel harm—but he was prepared to pay that.

What exactly that price was going to be, Ellis didn’t know. When he got the bill, he’d pay it. And in the meantime, if the Colonel wanted eggs sunny-side up before they got on the plane to go around the world, that’s what the Colonel would get.